


Burnt Umber Sierra

by Dreadmartha



Category: Homestuck, Intermission - Fandom, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: It's like Hamlet because everyone but one person dies., M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:37:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreadmartha/pseuds/Dreadmartha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Team Sleuth try to escape Midnight City, only to have a run-in with Droog on their way out of dodge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burnt Umber Sierra

The back of the 1986 Ford Sierra was familiar. Pickle Inspector knew all of the folds and cracks in the upholstery, had counted all the change he’d ever found between the cushions, fixed and broken the lock on the back door several times. There was a blanket in the footwell of the driver’s side seat, a relic from the times they were successful and safe, working through long stakeouts by sleeping and watching in shifts. It was ugly plaid and made of scratchy wool.

  
Sleuth wouldn’t let anyone else drive the Sierra, for all that he was constantly complaining about how much he hated the thing. He was the driver and DJ as longer as they were going so where. Pickle Inspector was always amazed by the length and variety of the catalog of songs and singers and stations Sleuth knew. He could work the radio with one hand, not even needing to look at the buttons. He’d just drag his fingers over them until he found the right one, and hammer into it.

  
Sleuth would talk to the radio or the engine or the car as a whole. Sweet talk, really. He’d try to chat up the volume on the radio, talk the windows down, make the engine roll over with a well placed joke.

  
Dick always told him to shut up, which only made him talk more.

  
Pickle Inspector always curled up in the backseat, leaning on the door and looking out the window. He dozed a lot. Cars made him sleepy, even if Sleuth took his turns too fast and liked to see how long it took the car from going highway speed to a dead stop.

  
Those were the good old days.

  
They put chains on the Sierra’s tires after Sleuth came home and found Dame in bed with an axe stuck between her legs.

  
Sleuth was silent, from the moment he muscled Pickle Inspector into the backseat, on through the entirety of the drive through the woods. Ace didn’t say much either.

  
Pickle Inspector gave up begging them to turn the car around and go pick up Broad when they left the city limits.

  
He was never going to see her again.

  
Sleuth, silent though he was, exuded an air of hopelessness that told Pickle Inspector, even in his socially inept world, that his friend was sure Broad was already dead.

  
Pickle Inspector curled up with the ugly, old blanket, his eyes wide open.

  
He could hear hailstones bouncing off of the windows and feel the chains drag over ice and snow. Sleuth had the heat on full blast but Pickle Inspector was sure they would freeze in there.

  
They would leave town, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and hope for the best.

  
The blanket scratched at his face as he stared at the back of the driver’s seat.

  
From the corner of his eyes he could see the windshield wipers fighting with the falling snow.

  
They were on a stretch of road that connecting Midnight City with a small town to the north. A town so tiny its name wasn’t on any map. The road cut through the forest Pickle Inspector was sure the Crew used as an execution ground and mass grave for everyone who got in their way.

  
He shivered under the blanket, closing his eyes. It was dark outside, but he didn’t dare disturb the silence of the ride by asking what time it was.

  
He’d never been so awake.

  
Pickle Inspector sat up slowly, staying quiet as the car lurched over snow covered rocks. He looked out his window, seeing only darkness and thick while fingers falling through it. Pulling his hair didn’t help get rid of that thought.

  
He leaned his head back on the top of the seat cushion, just glancing out the back window.

  
Darkness there too, only heavier and more awful. Darkness for Midnight City, darkness for all the people they’d tried to help, darkness for Dame and darkness for Broad.

  
He could see his breath.

  
The car bounced again and he held onto the door.

  
He couldn’t see his breath.

  
Pickle Inspector let himself be distracted by the thought.

  
He wasn’t cold. It was warm in the car, even if fear kept him from noticing.

  
He turned back to the back window.

  
Darkness, the white fingers of snow.

  
White, something else.

  
He squinted.

  
Whitish haze behind them, cutting through the darkness and obscured by the snow.

  
It grew brighter.

  
Closer.

  
Rounder.

  
Two bright white spheres.

  
His heart stopped.

  
“ _CAR!_ ” Was all he managed to shout before the Sierra’s back was rammed clear of the ground and they went fishtailing through the ice and snow.

  
Sleuth turned the wheel, even as the Sierra skidded along with only two wheels on the ground. They turned as the weight of the car hammered down on two wheels, and as he watched the side-view mirror snap off as it hit the tree, Pickle Inspector predicted that it would be his head that shattered the window and then cracked against the frozen bark.

  
The car lurched around just in time for him to be wrong.

  
It was Ace’s head that went through the window, Ace’s skull that connected with the tree and made a noise something like splitting wood and smacking lips.

  
Pickle Inspector didn’t remember dropping the blanket and lurching out of the car, army crawling through the snow. But suddenly Ace’s smashed head wasn’t in front of him, his clothes were freezing and wet all down the front, and Sleuth was pulling him into the forest.

  
He looked back, dumbly, hearing a car door slam.

 

The Sierra was wrapped around the tree on the passenger’s side. The trunk was open.

 

Sleuth yanked him around, started running. Pickle Inspector stumbled to keep up, his eyes stinging with snow and tears and sudden freezing sweat. He grabbed at Sleuth’s arm for support.

  
“Lift your feet dammit!”

  
He tried to, only to fall over himself as a shot crashed through the cold air. It felt like his head had been split clean open, his blood and brain spilling out as his nerves refused to go. Sleuth pulled him up, threw him towards the trees.

  
He didn’t need to be told to run.

  
He wasn’t hurt.

  
The shot had come from behind them, from the car.

  
Shooting a dead man.

  
Droog.

  
What was Sleuth holding?

  
He looked over, pawing at his eyes with a frozen hand.

  
An axe.

  
A dirty axe.

  
Sleuth had called him as soon as he found Dame. Found Dame with an axe pinning her to their bed.

  
There’d never been an axe in the Sierra’s trunk during the good old days.

  
He looked ahead and made sure to lift his feet.

  
He could see his breath.

  
A bullet embedded itself in the tree right in front of them.

  
Sleuth stopped and turned, hiding behind another tree, axe ready.

  
Pickle Inspector looked back at him.

  
He looked crazy and ugly and sad, his mouth open as he wheezed in and out, steam forming in front of him. Something moved back the way they had come. Something coming out of the darkness they’d left.

  
He grabbed Sleuth’s shoulder and pulled, but Sleuth shook him off.

  
“You go, your legs are longer.”

  
The wind picked up and Pickle Inspector was sure he was hearing things as Droog came closer.

  
Black on all that white, armed just with his revolver, tall and unflinching and red-eyed.

  
He saw Sleuth.

  
Sleuth saw him.

  
Pickle Inspector ran.

  
He heard Sleuth scream and snow crunched. He imagined the axe’s swing, coming smoothly down towards Droog’s head. He looked back in time to see Droog catch the axe’s handle, jam his gun under Sleuth’s jaw and fire.

  
Blood exploded out of his mouth and his jaw split, the skin sagging under the weight of his chin and teeth as it cracked away from the skull.

  
And he kept up the war-cry.

  
He headbutted Droog, regaining control of axe and swinging for his head again.

  
Droog ducked and sent his knee into Sleuth’s gut, making him drop the axe and sending him into the snow.

  
He picked up the axe as Sleuth, his handsome face split open, got back up and lunged at him.

  
Droog swung the axe low, the blade landing in Sleuth’s gut.

  
Steam came out of him. Steam and blood. Droog swung again, loosening his guts and pulling them out as he pulled the axe back.

  
Sleuth fell.

 

Pickle Inspector ran blind, tripping and stumbling, his hands filling with cuts and splinters as he reached out to feel for the trees around him. His legs were heavy yet they moved with an automatic understanding of their purpose.

  
His eyes filled with snow, his mouth, his nose. His clothes froze to his frame, his lungs struggled for air but he ran.

  
Faster than he ever had, faster than he knew he could.

  
The world was black and white and red.

  
His body ached.

  
He had to keep going.

  
He had nowhere to go.

  
He had to keep going.

  
Dame was dead.

  
Broad was dead.

  
Ace was dead.

  
Sleuth was dead.

  
Droog was after him.

  
His legs burned, then shook, then tripped, then gave entirely under him.

  
He crawled through the snow, losing feeling in his fingers, palms, arms, shoulders. He choked on snow, his body too cold to melt it as it caught in his throat. He coughed and gagged, his chest burning suddenly. He found his arms and leaned on his elbows and vomited.

  
When he could breathe again, there was something warm on the side of his face. He leaned into it. It was slippery and sticky, a warm layer over something hard and cold. His eye cracked open.

  
The bloody blade of the axe was snuggled tenderly against the side of his face.

  
A foot hooked under his chest and turned him over. Then sat on his sternum and held his in place as the axe swung up.

  
“Hello Inspector.”

  
The blade came down in a blast of cold and pain, bright red against Droog’s big shadow, landing razor sharp against his ribs and making them crumble. Pickle Inspector screamed and screamed, his voice breaking as the axe came down on the other side of his chest, then again on either side of his hips.

  
The illiac crest on either side was shattered. Droog tossed the axe away, watching him writhe and cry.

  
Then he got down on his haunches and started ripping Pickle Inspector’s clothes away. He ran his hands over the gashes on the man’s chest, smiling as he curled the tips of three fingers in under the skin. Pickle Inspector begged and cried and cursed, his neck throbbing against Droog’s teeth and giving up blood. Droog bit harder, feeling the windpipe struggle. Pickle Inspector choked and shook, mute with pain as Droog’s hands squeezed his broken hips and pulled his pants off.

  
He gasped as Droog let his windpipe go and torn at the big vein running up the side of his neck.

  
“You’re so cold,” Droog ground against him, big and running hot, yanking his smashed hips this way and that as he moved Pickle Inspector into position.  
The back of his mouth pulled on a frozen tongue.

  
He couldn’t even say no.

  
Droog working his way in, groaning as more of Pickle Inspector’s pelvis gave way under his hands. He was tight and hot and Droog thrust in hard, rocking his hips and making muscles give to make room for him. Pickle Inspector wouldn’t stop squirming under him, his legs twitching and kicked, his torso thrashing around and smearing blood in the clean white snow. Droog pulled his hips up to meet a thrust, then another, watching Pickle Inspector’s eyes tear up, his jaws trembling, blood pouring out of his neck. Droog sucked at the bites, ramming into him now and letting him fight back. His body was alive and spasmodic and so tight. Legs bounced against him, blood making him glide in and out easier. He choked the Inspector, this time with his hands, and felt his windpipe give way completely.

  
Droog came before Death glazed Pickle Inspector’s eyes over.

  
He tucked himself back in, looking at the mess he had made of the Inspector.

  
Blood kept pouring out of him into the snow. He was paler than before, even on his legs and hips, spread wide and starting to freeze. What little could been seen through the wounds on his chest, shattered ribs, big pink lung, the shy, hidden redness of his heart, didn’t move. His eyes were wide open.

  
A snowflake settled on the lense of one big blue eye.

  
Droog started for home.


End file.
